It even sounds complicated: making information resources assessible, discoverable, and usable by the public, and making open and machine readable the new default for government information. But that's what the White House ordered in May of 2013. Now agencies are finally getting their heads around how best to meet the requirements of the open data policy. Several agencies realize what's needed is a combination of policy and action. Federal News Radio's executive editor Jason Miller joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive with details about the plans of some agencies to meet this 18-month-old policy.

Mark Doms, the Commerce Department's undersecretary for Economic Affairs, said the agency is hiring a chief data officer, setting up a Data Advisory Council and looking to private sector experts to make its information more accessible and easier to use. Commerce also is testing mapping and other tools to improve the presentation of data.

On this week's Federal Tech Talk, Damon Davis, director of the Health Data Initiative at the HHS Idea Lab, and Sara Zellner, director of Programs at the Health Data Consortium, how public-private partnerships can help address issues like transparency and security in healthcare IT.

Sonny Hashmi, chief information officer at the General Services Administration, joins Federal News Radio for a free online chat to discuss everything from mobility to zero-based budgeting and collaboration, among other topics.

The Department of Commerce will hire its first-ever chief data officer, Secretary Penny Pritzker said recently. Pritzker also is establishing a data advisory council and introducing a "developer portal," which she said will help advance the agency's open data initiatives.

"Big data," "data to decisions," and "data analytics" are all big buzz words in
government at the moment as agencies try to harness the power of computing to
leverage the information they already collect into better decision making. But in
most cases, the data itself isn't worth much unless experienced people combine it
with their own judgment. Dan Saaty is the chief technology officer and co-founder of
Decision Lens, a Virginia company that helps crunch numbers for organizations
ranging from intelligence agencies to NFL franchises. He said on In Depth with Francis Rose if organizations want to use data to
help guide their decisions, the first thing they need to do is set priorities.

Former DHS technology leader Dan Katz believes the continued surge in the amount of data produced daily will provide a "renaissance, of really innovative, really high-value solutions" to the government's open data issues.